I Cogitate

Outing Valerie Plame aided our enemies
Bob Ewegen
Denver Post Columnist
7/06/2007

After 44 years in journalism, I don't get angry very often about the dirty tricks that so often besmirch the American political process.

But I am angry about the Valerie Plame affair, a sordid tale that flared anew this week when President George Bush commuted the prison sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

I am not angry at the commutation or the pettifogging partisan exchanges it spawned. I am angry at the underlying event - the fact that an American patriot whose only crime was to serve her country in a dangerous and honorable profession had her mission undercut for partisan political purposes.

I am even angrier that the vicious "outing" of Valerie Plame put her sources at risk - the men and women in foreign countries who had risked their own lives to help America in our war on terror.

In the intelligence trade, such foreign sources are called "assets." I call them heroes. And they are the ones who were put most at risk after columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame's CIA connection as part of a clumsy Bush administration effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had become a critic of the Iraq war.

Beating back the myths of Libby-gate
Clarence Page
Chicago Tribune
July 8, 2007

WASHINGTON -- "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions," the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a scholarly New York Democrat, used to say, "but not their own facts." Sorry, "Pat." But, my e-mail box runneth over with misconceptions from readers who feel entitled to their own facts about President Bush's commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence.

The former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney had been sentenced to 30 months in jail and a $250,000 fine before President Bush commuted the prison term, calling it "excessive." However, Bush let the fine stand, along with probation.

At first Bush sounded like he thought Libby deserved to be punished, just not so much. But the next day the White House said a full pardon had not been ruled out. If their mail is like mine, I can see why. A lot of Bush's own supporters are outraged about facts that are not really facts...

...Time to call in the truth squad: Contrary to the drumbeat of misinformation and dis-information that you may have heard on various talk shows, Valerie Plame was a covert agent under the relevant 1982 law that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert intelligence officer. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald cleared up that dispute in a memorandum during the sentencing phase of Libby's trial. "It was clear from very early in the investigation," he wrote, "that Ms. Wilson qualified under [the 1982 law] as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press." Four days later, Fitzgerald filed an "unclassified summary" of Plame's CIA employment which described her work as including "at least seven" overseas trips as chief of a unit working on Iraq weapons issues...

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